1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to an improved data processing system and in particular to a method and apparatus for processing data. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for managing flight planning calculations.
2. Background
A flight plan is created during a planning process and is followed by an aircraft during flight from a departure point to a destination point. The flight plan is required to be filed with the appropriate authorities prior to the aircraft actually flying from the departure point to the destination point. Important aspects of a flight plan include, for example, fuel calculations and compliance with air traffic control requirements. A correct fuel calculation ensures that the aircraft can safely reach the destination. A flight plan that complies with air traffic control requirements is important to minimize the risk of mid-air collisions. Other risks that may be minimized by a flight plan include running out of fuel if divert or weather conditions dictate an alternate route. Further, considerations, such as minimizing flight costs by appropriate choice of route, height, speed, and loading the minimum required fuel, including a reserve amount, on the aircraft, may be taken into account in creating a flight plan.
In performing fuel calculations, many different factors are taken into consideration. For example, accurate weather forecasts and conditions are factored into full fuel calculations. Fuel consumption calculations may vary due to effects caused by factors, such as head winds or tail winds. Other considerations for fuel consumption calculations include routes, flight levels, and the fuel consumption rate of the aircraft's engines. Further, safety regulations also require that an aircraft carry reserve fuel for unforeseen situations. Typical methods for calculating the amount of reserve fuel include having enough fuel to circle around the destination for some selected amount of time.
Further, in fuel calculations, cost factors also are taken into account based on time, fuel, a balance between time and fuel, or fuel costs. A flight planning program may often help produce this cost by finding the most economical speed given a particular set of conditions.
With a fuel planning application, a user may select an aircraft model from a library of existing models. The selection of the model helps accurately estimate different aspects of the flight plan, such as fuel usage, climb speeds, and descent speeds. Further, a user may change default properties or change selected properties to the default aircraft to fit the actual properties of the aircraft for which the fuel planning is being performed. Often values, such as for fuel flow for any given leg of a flight, are either a guess or estimate made by the pilot or dispatcher or are taken from a standard table for a particular model of an aircraft.
Given flight safety concerns and fuel costs, the ability to accurately tune the flight profile becomes increasingly important. The tuning or refining of a flight profile is a particular concern if an aircraft is required to deviate from a flight plan because of bad weather at the primary airport. Such an unexpected increase or decrease in fuel may have an impact on traveling to an alternate airport.
The flight plan is typically the result of many detailed computations involving other underlying data. This underlying data may come from published data about airports, navigation aids, aircraft performance models, weather observations, weather predictions, or direct inputs from the user. The flight plan is presented to the user at a display and the user may observe an apparent error in the data field in the results. It is currently difficult for the user to determine the actual source of the error because the complexity of the computations is hidden from the user in currently available applications.
Current paper forms or automated software applications used to generate flight plans only give the pilot, dispatcher, or other user's limited access to several inputs that impact the flight plan. Consequently, users often change readily editable values to create the correct end result that the user expects. The change in these values do not necessarily reflect actual values for the inputs being changed, but are made to obtain a result that the user expects for a particular flight.
The user may try changing input values to determine the effect on the output data values. The user may change these values to obtain the expected output data values. This type of process may be problematic because some changes modify flight plan values immediately while others only do so after the plan is recomputed. Further, with some flight plan products, the pilot may modify two different instances of the same aircraft with different results. As a result, changes made by the user may not accurately reflect actual fuel consumption due to a particular route entered by a user.